NUCLEAR POWER AND INDIAN POINT What the industry and NRC do not tell you. Written and Presented by: Gary Shaw Member of the Leadership Council of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) Sponsored by Sierra Club – NYC Group Seafarers and International House January 13, 2016
Introduction • The Nuclear Industry is like the night club magician who uses sleight of hand tricks so the audience looks in one place while the magic is being accomplished somewhere else. • The Nuclear Industry tries to get us to focus only on the narrow slice of the process that occurs when the enriched uranium fuel is used in the reactor to create a nuclear chain reaction to boil water so steam will turn turbines “without producing carbon dioxide” in that part of the process. • The reality is that nuclear power is damaging to the earth, polluting, harmful and deadly from the very start, which is uranium mining, through the never ending problem of storing and isolating radioactive waste that will be harmful and potentially deadly for millennia.
A Quick Note on the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) • The Nuclear Regulatory Commission operates under a structural conflict of interest. – 90% of the agency’s budget comes from industry fees – If a nuclear plants closes, the NRC has fewer positions to fill, so personnel cuts are possible. • When the industry began, nuclear plants in the US were issued operating licenses for 40 years. – That is the life span to which the plants were designed and constructed • The NRC has never rejected a relicensing application that was submitted without errors or omissions.
The Beginning of the Nuclear Age For most of the world, this was the first introduction to nuclear power. Little Boy – August 6, 1945 Hiroshima – August 6, 1945 Fat Man – August 9, 1945
Where did we go from there ? On December 8, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered the “Atoms for Peace” speech to the United Nations: He said : • On July 16th, 1945, the United States set off the world’s first atomic explosion . • The development has been such that atomic weapons have virtually achieved conventional status within our armed services. If at one time the United States possessed what might have been called a monopoly of atomic power , that monopoly ceased to exist several years ago. … the knowledge now possessed by several nations will eventually be shared by others, possibly all others. • The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military build-up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind. The US continued development of nuclear weapons as did other countries. When any country, such as Iran, develops nuclear technology which they say is for energy production, we fear that they are making nuclear weapons.
How does a nuclear power plant work? • The most common nuclear power plant design is a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR)
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle – Uranium Extraction Just like bombs, Nuclear Power starts with Uranium extraction. • Historically, uranium mining has been predominantly done on Indigenous people’s land. – From 1944 to 1986 , nearly four million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands … Many Navajo people worked the mines, often living and raising families in close proximity to the mines and mills. – Today the mines are closed, but a legacy of uranium contamination remains , including abandoned uranium mines …as well as homes and drinking water sources with elevated levels of radiation . Potential health effects include lung cancer from inhalation of radioactive particles, as well as bone cancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to radionuclides in drinking water. http://www.epa.gov/region9/superfund/navajo-nation /
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle – Uranium Extraction Tiokasin Ghosthorse who hosts and produces “First Voices Indigenous Radio” on WBAI Radio (99.5-FM), is Lakota and grew up in South Dakota. He has spoken that some of his high school classmates worked at the uranium mines, became ill and have passed. www.defendblackhills.org
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle – Depleted Uranium Depleted Uranium is extremely dense and is used for armor piercing shells or bullets. These munitions are also incendiary so they turn into dust that gets inhaled or ingested when it settles on crops or drinking water sources . This type of weapon is linked to horrible illnesses and birth defects
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle – Depleted Uranium • Depleted uranium weapons were used extensively in the 1991 Desert Storm invasion of Iraq. • In 2001 the Annals of Epidemiology reported the results of a study of 30,000 veterans – ½ were Gulf War Veterans and ½ were Control Veterans – Gulf War fathers were almost twice as likely as Control fathers to have babies with birth defects – Gulf War mothers were almost three times as likely as Control mothers to have babies with birth defects. • The use of depleted uranium munitions has continued in both Afghanistan and Iraq. WARNING: THE NEXT SLIDE WILL SHOW SOME REALLY GRUESOME PICTURES OF CHILDREN WITH BIRTH DEFECTS FROM FULLUJAH, IRAQ
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle – Depleted Uranium In September this year (2009), say campaigners, 170 children were born at Fallujah General Hospital, 24 per cent of whom died within seven days. Three- quarters of these exhibited deformities, including “children born with two heads, no heads, a single eye in their foreheads, or missing limbs”. The comparable data for August 2002 – before the invasion – records 530 births, of whom six died and only one of whom was deformed.* * http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-munitions-may-be-cause-of-baby-deaths-and-deformities-in- fallujah-5506956.html
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle – High Level Radioactive Waste Storage The most significant high-level waste from a nuclear reactor is the used nuclear fuel left after it has spent about three years in the reactor generating heat for electricity. By Spent Fuel Pool By Radioactive Volume Content High Level 3% 95% Waste Intermediate 7% 4% Level Waste Low Level 90% 1% Waste http://www.world-nuclear.org/nuclear-basics/what-are-nuclear-wastes-/
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle – High Level Radioactive Waste Storage Storage and disposal of used fuel and Spent Fuel Pool other HLW There are about 270,000 tons of used fuel in storage, much of it at reactor sites. About 90% of this is in storage ponds, the balance in dry cask storage. Much of the world's used fuel is stored thus, and some of it has been there for decades. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management//
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle • Some nuclear supporters claim that nuclear energy is greenhouse gas free. That is a false claim. www.defendblackhills.org
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle Nuclear power has a noteworthy carbon footprint. At the front end of nuclear power, carbon energy is used: • for uranium mining , milling , processing, conversion, and enrichment , as well as for transportation and the heavy construction of nuclear plants At the back end, there is the task of dealing with Spent Fuel: • isolation of highly radioactive nuclear waste for millennia — a task which science has so far not been able to address. Large amounts of water are also used, first in mining and then in cooling the reactors. • Uranium mine and mill cleanup demands large amounts of fossil fuel. • Each year 2,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste and twelve million cubic-feet of low-level radioactive waste are generated in the U.S. alone . • None of this will magically disappear . Vast amounts of energy will be needed to isolate these dangerous wastes for generations to come. https://content.sierraclub.org/grassrootsnetwork/sites/content.sierraclub.org.activistnetwork/files/teams/documents/SierraNuclearClimate%20%284%29.pdf
It Does Not Take an Accident to Harm People and the Environment Furthermore, if constituents of these high-level wastes were to get into ground water or rivers, they could enter into food chains . Although the dose produced through this indirect exposure is much smaller than a direct exposure dose, there is a greater potential for a larger population to be exposed. * The National Academy of Sciences issued a report that said that there is no level of exposure to ionizing radiation that can be considered harmless. * http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html
INDIAN POINT – THE BASICS Next to the Broadway At the Northern Southern Border is a Border is public the baseball St. Patrick’s field where Cemetery kids play.
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